Of late, I’ve been developing on a dystopian near-future Indian sci-fi short story collection. In keeping with that theme (and as part of the world/mood building excercise), I’ve been working on some digital art pieces that try to blend traditional Indian motifs with a cyberpunk sensibility.

Here are two I worked on this weekend. These are really fun to work on. Both of them use royalty free photos from Unsplash and Pexels and then I process them in GIMP to get them to a line drawing like state. For effect, I print them out on an old laser printer I have (which has a really screwed up toner pack and prints them weirdly). I then scan the line drawings back in and color them in GIMP and apply the post processing effects.

Less than a year ago, Sohini Mitra from Penguin India commissioned me to write/edit a book titled Moon Mountain (a graphic novel adaptation of the bengali novel Chander Pahar by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay of Pather Panchali fame). As Moon Mountain work progressed, I really enjoyed working with the Penguin team and discussions progressed to doing more books.

First of this was a story I wished to do for a long time – a story from The Mahabharata about the young warrior-prince Abhimanyu. I had done some research for it originally during my India Authentic days. But 22 pages felt like too little for that story. I’m glad I got to do it as a full graphic novel. That book Way of The Warrior – The Legend of Abhimanyu which features awesome artwork by Vinay Brahmania (who had collaborated with me for a few shorts in Mumbai Confidential. The book is now available for purchase at Amazon.in, FlipKart and Indian bookstores. A big thank you to our editor Nimmy Chacko for giving the book shape.

After the Abhimanyu book, Penguin Inked decided to publish the Indian paperback edition of my creator-owned crime-noir graphic novel (with Vivek Shinde) about Encounter Cops – Mumbai Confidential. I’m very grateful to Penguin India editor Ameya Nagrajan for batting big time for this to happen.

The book looks fabulous and is out now for purchase on Amazon.in and bookstores.

First of all, not been blogging so often. Finishing Mumbai Confidential took a lot out of me emotionally and I decided to take a break (which conveniently coincided with the Mohapatra family relocating back to snowy Massachusetts from sunny California.

I have a couple of books coming out (one is already released) this month.

First is the SHOLAY tie-in comic book titled GABBAR graphic novel, a prequel to the celebrated movie that (sort of) explores the origins of the dreaded bandit Gabbar Singh (one of the most iconic movie characters in Indian movie history). The book is now available on Amazon.in. It also has a bunch of Animatrix style shorts I wrote about various characters in Sholay. I had a ton of fun writing those and they came out very well.

The second book is very special to me. I got the chance to translate Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Moon Mountain (Chander Pahar) as a graphic novel. It will be available on Feb 26, 2014. Right now it’s on preorder at Amazon.in. The story is about an Indian teenager who gets to go on an adventure hunting for a fabled diamond mine deep in the heart of Pre-WWI Africa. Think of it as “King Solomon’s Mines meets Kim”.

My interview is up at the See Brian Write Podcast site. I speak with Brian LeTendre about the craft of writing, comic books, my influences and how I got my start among other things. There are some unscheduled detours into analyzing social upheavals using Computational Fluid Dynamics 🙂 and other weird stuff.

I think I was in seventh grade and there was a teacher who signed his middle initial in small letters (kinda like “A. b. Cdef“). Naturally curious, I asked him “Sir, why do you sign your name like that?”

The reply? He slapped me real hard in the full view of the class and said “How dare you question me on my personal things?”

I’m still befuddled as to why he reacted that way. I was shameless/incorrigible enough to continue asking questions, but it was such an “un-teacherly” thing to do. Teachers are supposed to satiate and encourage curiosity, this one very nearly killed mine. I have zero respect for that particular teacher. Over the years I’ve been lucky in getting mentors and teachers who took time to answer even the most idiotic/naivest of queries I put forth and I’m very very thankful to them.

Bottomline: Ask questions! Question everything! That’s how we learn best. The day you stop asking questions is the day you’ve surrendered forever to the status quo.